The Buddhist Book of Genesis

The Agganna Suttanta, which the Rhys Davids (1921) christened A Book of Genesis, gives the Buddhist version of the origins of the world, society, and kingship. This myth is important for two reasons: It is a cosmological representation that time and again has been alluded to, developed, and embroidered both in the later Pali literature of Southern Buddhism and in the Sanskritic works of Northern Buddhism; it is also unmistakably a statement contrary to the brahmanical version of the origins of the world and societal order.

My previous book Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-east Thailand gave a central place to Buddhist cosmology. I described there briefly the cosmology that postulates that world systems are destroyed and reformed in cycles of vast stretches of time (kalpa), that the world system consists of 31 planes of existence divided into the three major worlds – kama loka, rupa loka, and arupa loka – which again are subdivided into regions extending from terrifying hells at the bottom through the worlds of animals and men to the guardians of the world atop Mount Meru, and from there to the still higher numerous brahma heavens.